How she sharpened conditional futures
On strops of might-have-beens,
the butchered present in sutures.
He cursed in the fricative,
The way she could not act,
Or live in the indicative,
Only contrary to fact.
Tomorrow should have been vast,
Bud-packed, grenade-gravid,
Not just a die miscast.
It made him sad, it made him livid:
How she construed from the imperfect past
A future less vivid.
—A.E. Stallings
